CH 97.1

Chapter 97.1 – Clean Up After the War

At some point, I took the entire army to the border of the Lauren Knight’s territory to see off the imperial army’s withdrawal.

Incidentally, I was told at that time by Baron Bagamon, Commander of the Lauren Knights, that the two factions, which had continued to have a small dispute in the territory, were finally united as one after the coronation of Queen Silhouette (in truth, probably after hearing that the kingdom had won the war) and all returned to the kingdom’s side.

It’s a pretty unimportant story but it’s never a bad story if the territory along the border finally stabilized.

I took the whole army and flew back to the royal capital of Silesie.

From there, I was busy with many other things. I had to clean up after the war but I was also exhausted from all the things I had to do as a triumphant general in the capital such as consoling soldiers who had fought bravely and even doing things I wasn’t used to, like going to a victory parade.

Lyle-sensei and the prime minister were also busy concluding a peace treaty with Germania Empire.

Diplomatic negotiations after the war are another war.

The Kingdom of Silesie, which had won the great war, will not ask for the cession of any territory.

Instead, it demanded an unprecedented reparation payment from the Germania Empire equivalent to 50000 platinum coins in platinum, gold, silver, and copper coins.

This was an extremely unusual demand considering the common sense of this world that war is a struggle for territory.

The empire, unwilling to give up its territory at any cost, emptied its treasury and scraped together platinum, gold, silver, and copper coins from all over the empire, and managed to complete the reparation payment.

Since the Kingdom of Silesie, which had been at the center of the great war, decided to make peace alone, the Kingdom of Roland and Britanian Union, who had been on a joint front, lost their grip and can only demand for the return of a part of their old territories that had been taken by the empire. The Britanian Union settled the contradiction by being ceded with several small towns by the sea.

Well, I don’t think the two countries can complain because they didn’t even fight and got a fisherman’s benefit.

It was not long before the military and bureaucrats of the imperial government were relieved that the futile war started by Prince Freed had been brought to an end with minimum damage.

Soon after, the imperial economy, depleted of money for the settlements, was hit by a raging deflation.

The market, which had fallen from extreme inflation during the war to a sudden and intense deflation, was choked by the paralysis of the circulation of goods.

In no time, the empire ran out of money and goods.

The abundance of goods that had been overflowing in the imperial capital was lost in the war and the lack of money made it impossible to buy from foreign countries. The rest was hidden deep in the warehouses owned by large merchants.

The credit crunch and distribution paralysis resulting from the war led to the bankruptcy of merchant associations one after another, which led to the collapse of the lives of the civilians. Resentment swept across the empire.

However, there was nothing that could be done with the depleted imperial finances. Rather than helping the impoverished people, the imperial government pushed for higher taxes and monopolization of daily necessities in order to manage the lack of tax revenue.

As a result, the empire’s merchants and citizens became even more impoverished and the collapse of the economy sped up more.

The empire fell into an endless loop of deflation just as if it was rolling down a hill.

By imposing reparations payments as the empire wants to pay as little as possible, the empire collapses economically.

How many people realized that this was the Kingdom of Silesie’s strategy against the Germania Empire?

Of course, Germania, a great power, has its own set of great people.

Freed’s brain, Interior Secretary Biden, realized that the cause of the frenzied prices was the lack of currency and launched a bold reform to adopt convertible paper money as practiced in the empires at the far west.

It was an extremely progressive and correct response but it was already too late.

Having lost the great war, the empire had already lost enough credibility to guarantee the value of convertible banknotes.

No foreign country would accept Germania bills and the territorial states, forced by the imperial government to accept the completely worthless paper bundles, finally rebelled against the empire.

The civil war began with the rebellion in the western part of the empire, the Kingdoms of Rastoir, the Kingdom of Trania, and the Kingdom of Gartland. The war spread to the eastern part of the empire where the coalition of duchy, led by the Duchy of Lanct, defected from their home country and peasant uprising broke out in various parts of the empire.

The empire’s adversaries, the Kingdom of Roland, and the Britanian Union took advantage of this opportunity to resume their territorial incursions one after another.

Subsequently, an anti-empire coup d’etat led by the military made the imperial capital of Northmark. The largest empire on the Eura continent was quartered and completely wiped off the map but well, that is a story for the future.